Money Down the Drain?

Illegal immigration from Mexico has dropped 78% since 2000. Some say it is attributable to massively-enhanced border enforcement, aided by the construction of a 700 mile fence, 80 thousand federal employees focused on immigration enforcement and a strong commitment from government to stem the tide. Others simply point to the recession, the migration of undocumented aliens back to their homelands with the loss of job opportunities.

As one wag put it, these undocumented aliens wouldn’t still be trying to cross the border unless enough of them were getting in. While many have to move their favored crossing points to accommodate more difficult obstacles such as the installations near El Paso, Texas or San Diego, California, when they want to cross, they cross. Even at the fence, which is estimated to cost as much as $17 million a mile, a $35 ladder often does the trick.

“In many ways, the dynamic response reflects a broader evolution in border policing. In the 1990s and after 2006, when Congress set aside $2 billion to build border fences, the approach focused on static technology. San Diego was the model, with its three layers of fence and cameras atop poles 85 feet tall. But immigrants soon adapted and crossed elsewhere. So, as migration moved to Arizona and then to Texas, officials began to focus on mobility. Rosendo Hinojosa, the chief of the Rio Grande Valley sector of the Border Patrol, says he now wishes he could move the permanent cameras, which were set up east of McAllen in 2001, to busier areas.” New York Times, March 2^nd. The $1 billion experiment to create a 53-mile virtual fence through master contractor Boeing was abandoned as an abysmal failure in 2010.

Way before the Sequester tanked the federal budget, Bloomberg.com (September 14, 2010) noted: “If idiocy were a capital crime, at least 73 percent of Congress would be facing the hangman…  That’s the percentage of legislators who supported theSecure Fence Act of 2006, which created one of the most stunning boondoggles in U.S. history… To the 7,000 construction workers, 350 engineers and 19 construction companies that built the barricade, at a cost of about $3 billion, the fence represents manna from Washington.” Congress authorized a fence of somewhat less than 700 miles; our southern border is more like 2000 miles. Building the fence was costly, maintaining it is staggering, and even patching a hole cut into it runs an average of about $1.3 million.

They use submarines, tunnels, traditional crossing techniques, trucks disguised as service company vehicles, know how to distract the experts, fire cannons with drug packages over the border and even try and build ramps over the fence (see photo above on an unsuccessful effort) to drive vehicles over it. Repelled and deported, they come back. With sophisticated below-the-border drug cartels now focusing more than ever on moving their addictive drugs north, the penetration of our border fence is a whole lot more than immigration policy. Guns shipped south are equally challenging for guards on both sides of the border.

As new immigration reform before Congress is drilling down on a precondition of border security – whatever that means – an examination of our current efforts, which are feeling the pinch from Sequestration cutbacks, is center stage. But for a determined hopeful laborer, where there’s a will (wall?), there’s a way. The March 2^nd New York Times pulled up this microcosm as a strong indicator of the general feeling amongst those living on the U.S. side of the border: “Suly Ochoa, 56, a home health care aide whose peach-color home sits along the border wall in Granjeno, Tex., says that what she wants from the border policy is simple, ‘It needs to be smarter.’ … Like many of her neighbors in this town of 303, which was founded on Spanish land grants in 1767, she and her family have seen immigrants crossing through the area’s mesquite trees and tall grass for decades.

“Ms. Ochoa, a no-nonsense woman who grew up here, said she and many others in Granjeno had hoped the $20 million border wall — a 1.7-mile stretch of concrete and dirt, rising 18 feet — would help them feel safer. Now, a few years after completion, it looks to her more like a waste. ‘It’s not working at all,’ she said, standing near the wall. ‘To me, it’s money down the drain.’” Like so many Congressional plans and directives, the fence has just tested the ingenuity and pragmatism of those wanting to cross. We can’t afford to seal that border with any system that our government can currently afford, but we still think we can.

It’s good politics to talk about secure borders, even knowing the American public doesn’t really want to authorize the kind of money it would really take. But in today’s impaired economy, with contracting American buying power being the really big elephant in the room, can we still afford to pay for very expensive programs we know aren’t going to work? Ah, I forgot. Getting elected means lying and saying whatever you think dumb voters want to hear even if you know better.

I’m Peter Dekom, and again the lack of understanding at the grassroots level often promulgates the kind of wasteful spending of which unsustainable deficits are made.